Embodiments of the invention generally relate to medication delivery systems and methods thereof. In particular, a system and related methods of securely dispensing medication to a patient are disclosed.
Ensuring the accurate and secure delivery of medication to a patient is of fundamental concern to health care providers. This is particularly true in medical facilities such as hospitals, where large quantities of different medications are delivered, generally by hand, to patients at their bedsides who may be unable to verify that they are receiving the correct medication as prescribed by their respective doctors.
Probably the oldest and most common drug delivery verification system simply comprises visual verification by the health care provider that the label on the medication matches the identification of the patient. More recently, however, electronic solutions have been employed, which comprise the scanning of barcodes on the patent's ID and on the medication to obtain delivery confirmation via a patient database.
Electronic tracking helps prevent the inadvertent delivery to one patient of medication prescribed to another patient, which may occur, for example, due to medical staff fatigue or the careless handling of medications. However, such systems are effective only to the extent that they are correctly used by hospital personnel. Overworked and harried staff may elect, from time to time, not to perform the rather tedious scanning procedures. Moreover, staff may sometimes deliberately provide to one patient medication that is available but prescribed to another patient. It would be desirable to provide systems and methods that would prevent misdelivery of medication, unless misdelivery is absolutely required.
Therefore, new medication delivery control systems and methods that stringently control the distribution of medications are desired.